HR Practitioners are important performance management resources for staff, managers and heads of departments. They include staff on HR teams in Executive Offices or other administrative offices. They have an advisory role in performance management and can provide guidance on the PM policy, underperformance, ePerformance requirements, learning options and more.

Their key PM roles and responsibilities are described below.

Provide guidance

HR Practitioners should have strong knowledge of the performance management policy and be able to advise managers and staff on its application. They should be able to answer client queries about ePerformance cycle steps and deadlines, how to give and receive feedback in performance discussion and PM learning options and requirements.

Senior HR staff should know how to advise SROs and FROs on dealing with conflict and underperformance on their teams and the ePerformance rebuttal process.

Assist in monitoring compliance

HR teams should have a designated focal point that can assist senior managers in checking ePerformance compliance for their departments/offices/missions. ePerformance data is accessible in the HR Insight tool. Contact DOS-HR-Advice@un.org with questions about getting access to this database (for HR practitioners only.

Coordinate rebuttal panels

The HR team for each department/office/mission is responsible for coordinating rebuttal panels:​​

Developing lists of staff members at a wide range of levels who will be available to serve on rebuttal panels. This process should be done in consultation with the head of department and the staff representative of the department/office/mission;

Training and advising panel members on their roles and responsibilities;

Monitoring the progress and deadlines of rebuttal panels;

Forwarding the rebuttal panel report and the related performance evaluation to a main record-keeping unit for placement in a staff member's official status file.

Please click hereto watch the rebuttal panel briefing to learn more about this function.

Conduct training

Some HR practitioners have workshop facilitation experience and can deliver performance management training to their teams. OHR has facilitator toolkits for the following programmes:

Performance Management and Development (overview programme required for all managers and supervisors)

In some departments, HR practitioners take on a communications role: they send reminder emails on behalf of senior managers about ePerformance requirements and deadlines and they help to publicize OHR learning programmes.

Fulfill other PM roles

HR Practitioners also serve as staff members and may serve as First Reporting Officers (FROs) and Second Reporting Officers (SROs).

Be aware of the main PM roles and responsibilities associated with these roles on the staff member, FROand the SRO pages.

Guidance and tips

Facilitator Toolkits

The Office of Human Resources (OHR) is developing a series of facilitator toolkits for performance management workshops. Training Officers or HR Practitioners with facilitation experience can use them to deliver workshops on demand at their duty stations.

Toolkits for the following workshops are ready at this time:

Performance Management and Development (overview programme required for all managers and supervisors)

The presentation below gives a description of the roles and responsibilities of rebuttal panel members. It is a series of slides with narration provided by a former member of the Performance Management team. Please click hereto watch the rebuttal panel briefing to learn more about this function.